


When the Sun Has Set

by Yuripaws



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Angst, Death, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Post-Canon, Sad Ending, gomenasorry, look this is fucking sad and there's honestly no way for me to warn you further
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-02
Updated: 2017-09-02
Packaged: 2018-12-22 18:31:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11973189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yuripaws/pseuds/Yuripaws
Summary: Yuuri spreads Viktor's ashes by the ocean at Hasetsu.





	When the Sun Has Set

**Author's Note:**

> look
> 
> this was really hard to do
> 
> i'm sorry

The seagulls remind him of St. Petersburg.

They remind him of long walks, of salt and of snow, of frosty breath mingling between warm kisses. Warm like their apartment. Warm like their bed. Warm like Viktor's skin.

The urn Yuuri clutches in his hands is so cold.

It's pretty, gold accents glinting faintly in the light of the evening sun. That same light glints off the twin rings on the hands that hold it, the combined gleam nearly blinding him. He tries to look away, but the light is just as bright where it plays across the water, across the gently rolling waves of the ocean Viktor had loved so dearly. Yuuri watches the ebb and flow for a moment, lulled by the push and pull, and although his body is here, here in Hasetsu, his mind is far away.

Lost, he thinks, blinking out of his haze. He glances back down at the urn he's holding. Where is he?

"In Hasetsu," he whispers, and the croak of his voice startles him. He can't remember the last time he'd heard himself speak. He coughs abruptly, as though his words had unsettled the thick dust laid across his disused vocal cords, and when he can finally breathe again, he does so slowly. Slow breaths. Deep breaths. Trembling breaths.

Trembling like the hands that fumble at the lid now, and it pops off so suddenly that he nearly drops the entire thing. The corner of his mouth twitches as he hugs the urn to his chest protectively. Viktor would have laughed.

_Yuuri! You wouldn't let me fall, would you?_

"Never," Yuuri says softly, and although his throat stings, he manages to keep breathing. Somehow, after all that's happened, he's still breathing. He's still here.

He can't look down at what he's holding. At what's inside. But he needs to. He needs to be strong.

_Yuuri, you're not weak._

Viktor had told him that once. They had sat here, in this very spot, on this very ledge. They had sat here on the sand, among the seashells and the twigs, and Viktor had told him that he wasn't weak.

But right now, standing alone by the shore and grasping the remains of what had meant everything to him, he's never felt weaker. He feels it in his knees as they try not to buckle when he takes the short drop of the edge, shoes sinking into the sand as he takes unsteady steps towards the water. He feels it in his hands as they fight to keep still, one reaching into the urn quickly, grabbing a fistful of ashes before his mind can reel at the thought of what he's touching. He isn't sure if he's supposed to do it this way. He isn't sure if he cares. Viktor wouldn't. And that's all that matters.

The ashes are coarse between his fingers, but the sea breeze carries them off before he can think too hard on what he'd just felt. What had that been? What part of Viktor is scattering before him, never to be seen or touched again?

His hands? Large and firm, but gentle where they liked to rest -- on his shoulder, his arm, his cheek, the small of his back, the nape of his neck. Slender and graceful fingers ghosting over and pressing into his skin, and the memory is so real that Yuuri feels his flesh prickle, feels something not-quite-there against his skin. But there's nothing, there's no one here but him, so small and so alone beneath the darkening clouds.

Yuuri takes another handful, his hold steady but his heart racing. What part is slipping away from him now? Viktor's legs, maybe. Legs that liked to intertwine themselves with Yuuri's own in the middle of the night. Legs that liked to leap, to dance, to spin, to skate. They liked to run along this very shore, feet splashing through shallow waves over the sound of breathless laughter. Freezing cold toes burrowing underneath him in the winter, sly smiles and soft lips.

And this? Yuuri thinks, watching the next handful scatter. Those same lips? The way they curved playfully, the way they pouted when he'd pretend to be upset. The way they felt against Yuuri's skin, against his forehead and against his thighs. He's felt those lips on every inch of him. He'd listened to them for hours, eager for the words that dripped from them like honey, like something to be collected and cherished. Something to be repeated endlessly, in every video Yuuri has managed to get his hands on. Interviews beside him at the rink. Snippets of recorded vacations. Private videos, for Yuuri's eyes only. Soft lips and softer words, 'I love you's and 'I'll never leave you's and things that Yuuri replays each night before bed. Each night since he'd lost him.

He spreads his eyes next, he's sure of it, because he can nearly hear the laughter in them. Nearly see them reflected back at him in the water, in the last of the blue fading from the sky. Eyes that crinkled when he smiled, accentuating the dimples that Yuuri so often kissed, so often teased him about. Eyes so blue that Yuuri's certain that the color had no true name. It didn't exist anywhere other than in the face of his soulmate, of his other half.

Half, he thinks shakily, looking down into the urn with bated breath. He's still got half to go. Half of Viktor to spread. Half of Viktor to say goodbye to.

I can't do this, he thinks, shuddering hard, and before he realizes it, he's upending the urn into the sand, watching the wind snatch at it greedily as it falls. He lets the urn drop with a muffled thud, his body following soon after as he sinks to his knees. He can't stop shaking. He's going to be sick. He nearly retches, but suddenly he's laughing, because he can only imagine what Viktor might say if he were beside him, watching him.

_Yuuri, please don't throw up on my ashes! How rude._

It's funny, Yuuri thinks, snorting into his clean hand. The other grips at the sand, the sand mixed into Viktor, and when it pulls away, it takes nothing with it. There's nothing there to grab. Gone.

I'm an idiot, he thinks, laughing harder. It isn't until his vision blurs, tears caught in blinking lashes behind dirty glasses, that he realizes that he's crying. He wipes at his face furiously, but the tears come faster, his chest heaving harder, and when the burning in his lungs is just too much to bear, he lets out the sobs he'd been trying to hold in for so long.

He cries hard, but the seagulls cry harder, over and over as though they were calling out to someone. A voice crying in the distance. But the only voice Yuuri hears now is his own, thick and choking on saliva and sea salt. He hasn't cried since the funeral. He hasn't cried since he'd stepped outside, away from prying eyes and endless condolences, hiding from a barrage of sympathy and respectful hands reaching for his shoulder. He hadn't let anyone touch him. No one except his parents, no one except Mari, and it had been Mari who had finally found him that night, Mari who had taken him into her arms so protectively.

_Cry_ , she'd told him. _Don't ever let anyone tell you that you shouldn't cry._

And so he lets the sobs tear through him, lets them wrack his body, lets himself fall apart in Hasetsu, in the place he'd built himself up, the place his dreams had been realized, the place that he and Viktor considered home. Their apartment was in St. Petersburg, but their home was in Hasetsu.

He's home now, Yuuri thinks with his last shred of coherency. Viktor's home.

The word echoes throughout his mind as he drains himself, reduced to ugly sniveling and hitching hiccups. Home. He thinks of home as he wipes at his face, the last of his tears drying on his cheeks and crusting on his glasses. He thinks of home as he stumbles to the water's edge, washing his hands over and over, scrubbing away something that isn't there. Viktor, he thinks stupidly, staring down vacantly at the waves lapping at him. That was Viktor he'd washed away.

Home.

He gets to his feet and picks up the urn, but he pauses now. Alone.

Home, he thinks, his mind thinking of Hasetsu but his soul knowing better.

Viktor. _Viktor_ is home.

Yuuri just wants to go home.

He wills his body to move again, to find life enough to take him away from here, if only for now. It's getting late. The sun is setting.

_Solnyshko._

He hears it so clearly that he starts, nearly dropping the urn again. But when he looks about wildly, there's no one around. Only him. Alone. No one here to call him that, to liken him to the sun. So warm and so bright. But not anymore.

He shakes his pounding head, taking the first heavy steps away from the sea, away from his life and his love. No, not anymore. The sun has set, the sky creeping towards something cold and empty. Something that calls to him.

Yes, he thinks, heading back to Hasetsu but thinking of going home, it's getting dark.


End file.
